 Good afternoon. I'd like to call the meeting of the Board of Public Utilities for the city of Santa Rosa to order If we may have a roll call, please Board member right here Board member Grable Board member Bartholome here board member Batenfort Vice chair Anoni here and chair Galvin here let the record reflect that all board members are present with the exception of board members Batenfort and Grable Very good welcome again We're going to move to item two point by item two we have three proclamations To read out. I'm going to start with the first one because we have one attendee of the three So this is for Sean Murphy. Welcome, Mr. Murphy So the proclamation reads whereas Sean Murphy has been a devoted employee of the city of Santa Rosa Water Department for more than 27 years and Whereas Mr. Murphy began his affiliation with the water department as a temporary maintenance worker in reclamation and then as a wastewater Operator intern while he completed his wastewater operator coursework at the Santa Rosa JC and Cal State Sacramento and Whereas Mr. Murphy officially started his permanent career with the city on July 31 1996 as a wastewater operator number two in the water department and Whereas Mr. Murphy gained a large background of institutional knowledge of the operation of the Laguna treatment plant during his extensive service And whereas Mr. Murphy was willing to share his institutional knowledge and operational know-how With his co-workers in other operational areas at the Laguna treatment plant and Whereas Mr. Murphy was an ambassador for the plant leading tours to educate and the public on the complex wastewater treatment process and whereas Mr. Murphy was known for his candor and Selflessness when challenging operational conditions at the plant required a team effort and Whereas Mr. Murphy had a dry sense of humor and an enjoyable tendency to share his opinion in order to imbue levity in the work day and Whereas Mr. Murphy retired on December 29 2023 and is enjoying a well-deserved retirement Now therefore be it resolved that the Board of Public Utilities of the City of Santa Rosa does hereby express our sincere and heartfelt Appreciation to Sean Murphy for his 27 years of distinguished service to the Laguna treatment plant the water department and the community of Santa Rosa and I happily signed this earlier. I will open it up at this point If there's any board member or staff comments that wish to be made Before giving mr. Murphy an opportunity to speak sure vice chair, Noni The one thing I say I missed the fact that I didn't get a tour of the plant from you because when Mike Prince made me run through the Plant I was so focused. I mean I was thinking they should get a nicer guided. No But thank you Anyway, thanks for all your service and enjoy your retirement Director Burke Thank You chair Galvin and members of the board. I just wanted to tell Sean. Thank you so much for your service I know we didn't get to work together very closely, but I always enjoyed When you attended quarterlies and had great questions for me and also just randomly chatting quickly on certain things So it was always a pleasure to see you in the control room and we are going to miss your very Great institutional knowledge out at the treatment plant. So, you know, if you're ever bored you can just come on back Congratulations on your retirement very well deserved mr. Murphy. Would you like to say a few words? Not obligated it's up to you Of course Very good. If you would come down. We'd like to give you the proclamation and have a picture taken With the board Okay, we have two more proclamations Neither of the people involved could attend today that the first one is for outgoing board member Mark Walsh. I'll read that proclamation into the record Whereas Mark Walsh was appointed to the board of public utilities by city council member Eddie Alvarez in February 2021 and whereas during Mark's three years of service with the board of public utilities he has provided outstanding leadership and guidance to the Santa Rosa water department and Whereas mr. Walsh has served on many subcommittees of the board Including budget review subcommittee water conservation subcommittee and contract review subcommittee and Whereas mr. Walsh provided a perspective of cost efficient effective and ecologically prudent delivery of water sewer and storm water utilities with the guidance he provided and decisions he made as a board member and Whereas mr. Walsh brought his financial expertise to the board of public utilities Providing in-depth review and understanding of the water department's annual operation maintenance and capital budgets as well as water and sewer rates and Whereas mr. Walsh was appreciative and supportive of Santa Rosa water staff acknowledging from the dais the hard work of the team and those presenting to the board and Whereas mr. Walsh recognized the board's responsibility to make tough decisions regarding funding infrastructure maintenance Repair and replacement and made these decisions thoroughly and thoughtfully to ensure Santa Rosa water Can continue to provide safe and reliable water delivery storm water management and wastewater collection treatment and reuse to its ratepayers Now therefore be it resolved that the board of public utilities of the city of Santa Rosa Does hereby recognize command and express its sincere appreciation To mark walsh for his three years of dedicated service to the community of Santa Rosa, and I signed that again earlier today We'll have public comment shortly The final proclamation is for Denise Cordova who again could not be here Whereas Denise Cordova has been a devoted employee of the city of Santa Rosa for more than 20 years and Whereas miss Cordova started with the city of Santa Rosa as a senior administrative assistant in the recreation and parks department where she provided support to the mayor's gang prevention task force policy team and the measure O grant agencies and Whereas miss Cordova transferred to the Laguna treatment plant in the water department on July 6 2010 and whereas miss Cordova provided more than 20 years of excellent administrative support to multiple work groups and customer service to the public and Whereas miss Cordova was always willing to take on new tasks to help the team achieve their goals and Whereas miss Cordova always had a smile on her face and a positive attitude and Whereas miss Cordova truly cared about her position and team providing cross training to fellow employees and training her replacement prior to retiring and Whereas miss Cordova shared her talent of sewing and knitting and shared her passion for traveling with her co-workers and Whereas miss Cordova retired on November 15 2023 and is enjoying her time traveling with family Now therefore be it resolved that the Board of Public Utilities of the city of Santa Rosa Does hereby recognize commend and express our sincere and heartfelt appreciation To Denise Cordova for 20 years of outstanding service to the community of Santa Rosa and to the city of Santa Rosa And that proclamation again was signed earlier today. So congratulations to her At this time we'll open it up for public comment. Mr. DeWitt Yes, sir. My name is Dwayne DeWitt. I'm from Roseland, which is in district one and I wanted to say I'm sorry that mr. Walsh isn't here so he could hear my comments I only met him because he got appointed to this body And I found him to be a very helpful person in terms of talking with the community about Issues that we face in district one Many of you may not know but for over 45 years District one has been facing pollution that came from stormwater pollution that Went through the sanitary sewage system under Sebastopol Road, which had a leak and then Contaminated the underground aquifer throughout Southern and Western Roseland going from West Avenue and McMinn Avenue out to the Southwest and there was actually a state Superfund site called McMinn Avenue State Superfund site in 1984 40 years ago and so Mark was willing to listen to these Historical situations and talk with us about the possibility of how we could resolve What's been a lingering problem for well owners? The city's approach was to get people off of their wells and put them on city water about 30 years ago I guess long story short though on all of this is that mr. Walsh was a good and Considerate conscientious public servant helping us at times when others didn't have An interest even and how we're gonna try to deal with our area out there And we still face a number of brownfields Pollution type situations and we were looking for lead agencies to help us and mr. Walsh while he was here was at least considering the idea of having mr. Alvarez be helpful on that all the best to you in the new year folks and I'll be hanging around for more comments I know the attorney will be carefully watching making sure I'm on topic Thank You mr. DeWitt we look forward to council member Alvarez appointing mr. Walsh's Replacement so that we have a full board so thank you for your comments Item number three any statements of abstention by board members All right seeing none we have no study session Item 5.1 are the minutes So we will open it up for public comments on the minutes, which is item 5.1 If you wish to make a comment, please move to the podium Seeing no one the minutes will be approved and entered We'll now move to item 6.1 our staff briefing director Burke Thank You chair Galvin and members of the board our staff briefing is our water and recycle water supply update and making the presentations The presentation will be Sean McNeill our deputy director of environmental services and Mike Prince our deputy director of regional water reuse operations Welcome gentlemen Good afternoon chair Galvin members of the board. I'm Sean McNeill filling in for Claire Nordley Today, I'm the deputy director of environmental services so Starting off with storage on Lake Pillsbury Storage in Lake Pillsbury is increased to more than 60,000 acre feet as of this week Which is about 200% of their target storage for this time of year if you'll recall PG&E sought relief in the summer and fall from their FERC mandated releases into the upper Russian River and We're maintaining releases at about a minimum of 25 Cubic feet per second or lower And the FERC has issued a variance They were operating under expired on December 19th when the storage in Lake Pillsbury exceeded the 36,000 acre foot mark And operations have reverted to their normal FERC Mandated flow under their annual licenses currently being issued for the project Uh, this is Lake Mendocino With the black bars. It's hard to tell on this screen here, but the black bar is Just starting on the left hand side of the curve of the water year And the purple bar is last year's so Lake Mendocino is about 73,300 acre feet right now and is gaining This week the storage exceeded the water supply storage pool, but is not into the Forecast informed reservoir operations management zone yet Storage is not where it was last year But it is still a very healthy in comparison to prior drought years With above normal carryover in storage from last year The army corps has been making some minor adjustments to increase the outflow from Lake Mendocino In anticipation of the additional storms this weekend, but no high flow releases have been Released yet Now moving on to Lake Sonoma storage Uh current storage level is above 245,000 acre feet which is Above the storage pool and encroaching into the flood storage space of the reservoir And we're continuing to see healthy storage with last season carryover as of today By Sonoma water's estimate. We'll still have about three to four years of water supply for its contractors Which is really good news Lake Mendocino and Sonoma Have now encroached into the flood storage pool And this is allowed because of the forecast informed reservation reservoir operations Also known as fero, uh, Lake Mendocino the water year from 2021 to 2026 Is major deviation in control manual to store additional 11,600 And 50 acre feet above the curve. So that's been A great effort that Sonoma water has participated in to ensure that we have that forecasting to Store that additional water And then in december of 2023 the temporary Urgency change petition was granted for determining the minimum in stream flow requirements in the water year Hydrologic index will be based on storage in Lake Mendocino as of january 1st And since that time the water year is considered dry because the reservoir was under 68,400 acre feet at the time And it will be reassessed monthly So reminder that uh now that The storage has exceeded the water supply pool Operational decisions for releases are now passed over from Sonoma water To the u.s. Army Corps of Engineers to manage the flood control needs of the russian river And this uh speaks to the negotiated major and minor deviations that were developed by Sonoma water With the u.s. Army Corps of Engineers for additional storage that is above and beyond the available water supply storage in both reservoirs Utilizing the forecast informed reservoir operations allows for changes to the reservoir operations manual for storage And switching over from water supply To a different kind of water supply We've received and have completed the u.s. Bureau of Reclamation's Small-scale water efficiency grant. Um, this was a commercial cash for grass rebate expansion plus tree installation The project resulted in Over 50,000 square feet of grass being removed and 23 million gallons of water savings We received 75 000 dollars in grant funds match rebates And miraculously After making a few phone calls We were able to uh to some large landscape owners. We already knew of we were able to Have these funds dedicated within a couple hours And so, uh Overall, there are 10 different projects that went through This program and we increased the rebate from a dollar 50 to three dollars per square foot Up to a maximum of 10,000 square feet each So it was a great, um project And I will hand it over to Mr. Prince Good afternoon chair galvin members of the board mike prince deputy director of regional water reuse operations Here for recycled water supply update This is a chart that I think you've seen versions of many times I want to draw your attention to the red curve that just goes a little past January, um The central gray line is sort of the average trend. Um, when you look at numerous years Combined or averaged and right now you can see the red trend is trending pretty darn close to the average I would say things are pretty normal In contrast, you can see last year is the dark black line We had been receiving quite a bit of rainfall by this time the year and our storage levels were good Moving up very rapidly Which triggered a series of discharges throughout last year, which is evidenced by the the sawtooth pattern you can see Particularly between march and april But all told things are really quite normal They're not very exciting yet, although we are looking at getting quite a bit of rain coming up very soon next slide This is a trend that shows our recycle water production All the gray squiggly lines in the background represent individual years The purple trend throughout all of those just represents an average last year was A lot more interesting I guess you could say overall relative to this year There was a big dip in flow That had been trending very high in january and in march Although this year as you can see by the black partial line on the left side Just up through december we're we're tracking similar to last year And I I expect to see things move up a little bit Especially over the next few days and weeks But generally things are are relatively normal right now, although below the average from 1986 to 2022 So shan and I are available for questions if you have any Thank you questions from the board All right hearing none. We'll now move it open For public comment on item 6.1 If you wish to make a comment, please move to the podium and wait for the timer to appear on your screen Mr. Duit Do I have to wait for the timer or just talk? All right. Hello. My name is dwayne duit. I'm from roseland About 30 years ago. I was uh informed that a project called left field farms Was going to begin working with the city of santa rosa on using recycled water I thought that's a really good thing and I have followed for these last 30 years the use of the kelly farm and the brown farm and I'm really excited about recycled water being used as helpfully as possible And I was hoping that there'd be a way to actually get income From the use of recycled water more so than you get now if you get any I'm uncertain if there is any income that comes from These different projects. It's not necessarily easy to find any information about that but Water is an asset It's a commodity No matter if it's been used once twice or five times or if it has any trace pollutants So i'm hoping that you folks will find ways to Look for more money in the revenue stream from the use of recycled water Because we'll be having more water the next couple of years. Now's the time to get some positives from it. Thank you Thank you, mr. Duit They'll take care of our staff briefing. We have no consent items. We have no report items We'll move to item nine, which is public comments on non-agenda matters We'll take those at this point if you wish to make a comment Please move to the podium and wait for the timer to appear and state your name for the record Mr. Duit Hello, my name is duane duit. I'm from roseland And what I wanted to speak about is something I mentioned earlier that I don't know if you folks are Tuned into it, but it's something that's very important to the people who still use wells in the roseland area Now annexed into the city of santa rosa the leaking underground storage tanks from petroleum gas stations That co-mingled with pollution from dry cleaners trichloroethylene Tce and other chemicals And then it was spread into the underground aquifer because of a leak in the sanitary sewer system Under sabastopol road it spread out to the southwest and That leak has never been plugged in a sense and the problem has never really been resolved The approach was well, we'll put those people who got polluted wells on to city water And then They could make that decision if they'll use their water under that well in a different way All of you know about the groundwater sustainability program that the state has now put into effect Anybody that has a well has to pay $30 a year for having a well Even if you're not using it and you want to keep it alive So that might seem like a small amount of money to you, but it's the principle that counts to the people who had wells drilled on their property Paid the money to have functioning wells and then we're told down the road Well because of a governmental situation, we're not going to let you use that well It really Bothered a lot of people in roseland and it disrupted the lives of a number of people Especially when the city of santa rosa working with the county declared what was called a red zone Around a certain area of properties that were contaminated Sunset avenue Hughes avenue going to the north up to sabastopol road That essentially was a form of redlining which caused those people's properties to lose value And you might not have heard about it much, but others who were living there did hear about it And when you get that red zone, it's still in maps you can find if you do some research And you'll see that that red zone then there was a yellow zone and it went further out to the southwest area where the roseland unified school district built roseland creek elementary school And and basically they pump They use a well also And no one ever really dug deeply into did that pollution go all the way out to there And so those school children are drinking water coming up from that aquifer And we're concerned that someone needs to see if there was pollution When the leak was first noticed over 40 years ago, I guess roseland school had testing done And they took themselves off of the well and got on city water So please look into this. It's something that is in your preview Thank you, mr. Dewitt I believe that'll take care now of public comments. We have no referrals. We have no written communication Do we have any subcommittee reports? Thank you. You too Any board member reports? All right, we'll move to the director's report Thank you chair galvin and members of the board. We have I have a couple items to share with you today First I was a request from the city clerk's office just to remind Those in the public that might be listening that we do have a vacancy on the board of public utilities It is a vacancy that is appointed by councilmember alvarez The purpose of the board the board of public utilities is to provide general policy direction over the management and operation of the city's Utilities the board reviews and approves policies and procedures for the department Establishes and recommends the approval of rates fees and the annual operating and maintenance budgets Ours utility and capital improvement projects Contracts for maintenance services supplies and professional services and negotiates property acquisitions Rents and leases for water department property So if anyone is interested in joining the board You can go to srcity.org Slash bpu and on that page There is a link where you can apply online for a board or commission So again if there's any interest, uh, there's a vacancy on the bpu Second I wanted to let the board know that the laguna environmental laboratory Has met the new california environmental laboratory accrediting program requirements This is a really big deal. So a big huge congratulations to the laboratory team These new requirements are collectively known as the nilac Institute standards or t and i for short And they were introduced in october of 2020 And required all certified environmental labs in california to be compliant by january 1st of this year And so we uh got it in in december of last year, which was great news This is a major achievement for our lab and I just personally want to thank all of them for all of their work Um that the staff has done to allow us to meet this deadline. So great job by the team And then last I wanted to let the board know That um as you are aware kimberley, uh harryman, uh retired, uh last or the start of this year And as we are going through the recruitment process, um We had an opportunity to uh have an acting assignment And so I wanted to let you know that um nick harvey who's in the audience Has been appointed as the acting deputy director of administration for the water department Um, he's worked for the city since august of 2014 And he started in finance and then came over to water in 2016 He's been presenting in front of you a lot this last um calendar year in 2023 And so uh congratulations to nick you'll be seeing more of him in his acting role And that's my report and I'm happy to answer any questions the board may have Thank you and congratulations mr harvey any board member questions for the director If not, we'll open it up for public comment on item number 14 If you'd like to make a comment, please move to the podium And wait for the timer to appear on the screen. You may begin by stating your name for the record Seeing no one rise that'll take care of the director's report. We'll now move to item 15.1 Which is conference with legal counsel. I'll ask uh assistant city attorney bigger staff to announce the item, please Thank you chair galvin, uh item 15.1 conference with legal counsel Anticipated litigation initiation of litigation pursuant to paragraph two of subdivision d of government code section 549 5 6.9 one case Potential litigation by meadowgreen number two homeowners association Related to creek bank erosion on the association's parcel adjacent to 65 12 meadowgreen place Thank you. We'll now adjourn to the mayor's conference room for the study or for the um closed session And then we will come back downstairs Please take public comment chair galvin. We'll then come back downstairs afterwards and report out But before we go upstairs, we'll take public comment on item 15.1 Thanks. I knew it. I knew you realized I was waiting around for one last chance Hi, my name is duane duit. I'm very interested in creek bank erosion And curious as to how a homeowners association is coming to the city about some sort of a dispute It makes one wonder is city property next to this creek? Or are you folks responsible for creeks that run through the city even if it's not your property? Thank you kindly Assistant city attorney bigger staff. Do you want to uh respond? Yes, uh, thank you, mr. Duit. Um, the the city is uh responsible for property that it it holds uh an interest in Okay, so it's not just every creek. Thank you kindly sir. That's correct Thank you. We'll now adjourn to the mayor's conference room and we'll come back afterwards and re-adjourn down here. Thank you Okay, I think we're all back. We'll re-adjourn the meeting of the board of public utilities Um, if we may have a roll call, please madam secretary Board member right here Board member grable Board member barthelot here board member baden for it Um vice chair anoni here and chair galvin here All right, let the record reflect that all board members are present with the exception of board members baden for it and grable Thank you. I'll ask our assistant city attorney bigger staff to report out on our closed session Thank you chair galvin for item 15.1 the board gave direction to legal counsel Very good. We'll now take public comments on item 17. If you wish to make a comment, please move to the podium Seeing no one and that'll take care of item 17. Thank you everyone That concludes the agenda for today's meeting So we'll adjourn in honor of our former board member walsh And our two retired employees who we presented proclamations to So we are adjourned. Thanks